When I
read for the first time Pope Paul VI's 1972 “Smoke of Satan” homily, I was
intrigued by his reference to the human sex drive as one way Satan can seek the
ruin of souls. The sexual decadence
of popular culture—in music, television, and videos—is only the most obvious
manifestation. But let us consider from the standpoint of Catholic moral teaching the
evils of fornication,
adultery, cohabitation, divorce, bearing children outside wedlock and
homosexual sex. Controlling these sins, living chastely, is a basic Catholic
moral value. But I blog on these because, even as the social and economic results
from these practices becomes ever more obvious and serious, priests and laity
seem determined to ignore talking of them. No parish today seems willing to
admonish or rebuke someone because of sexual misconduct, this in spite of the
reality that it is precisely these sins that are wreaking havoc throughout society.
Just what are social consequences of
uncontrolled libido? For starters, the explosion of single-parent homes is
having overwhelming consequences on society, economy, and politics. The rise in
cohabitation and no-fault divorce have left scores of fatherless children on
the ever-growing welfare rolls and increases crime and substance abuse throughout
local communities. These evils are now bankrupting taxpayers and future
generations with huge national debt that is due in no small part to welfare
spending and the offshoot of crime and social instability, while driving the
federal and state governments to more severe measures to satisfy their need for
revenue.
What of our universities? They are plagued by a “hook-up” culture that
dominates campus life, while relegating learning to second place. One could
make the argument that libido dictates learning too, with indoctrination in not
only sex education but sexual political ideology through courses like “queer
studies,” that sees all knowledge as sexual-political grumbles.
The oppressive side of this libidinous culture
is now becoming too visible to ignore in the face of years of denial, as the inescapable
outcome of lustful indulgence is absolutism, plainly seen in a political agenda
pushed by the same sexual radicals who promote the hook-up culture. The
response of the Church to all this has been silence. Now in turn, Christians find themselves
being accused of “hatred” and
“bigotry” and threatened with punishment for criticizing the homosexual agenda
by the same lobby of radicals. As Martin Niemoeller warned of a similar ideology, no one speaks out for us because we did not
speak out for others. Catholic Supreme Court Justice
Alito has also weighed in on this.
Truly diabolical is this: because many do not control
the sin, it controls them. And--by refusing to internalize divine revelation,
and instead redefining it with expressions we find safer to deal with, we let
the sin recruit us as its proxies. We
join witch hunts against those who would choose the Lord.
Any Catholic should know what constitutes
fornication and adultery, because the Bible reveals it. “Fornication” and
“adultery” are biblically defined sins committed by two people and punished by
God and the moral sanctions of the community. The moral crisis the Body of
Christ faces at present is not imprecise or unsound doctrine. Her failing now
is lacking the courage to apply its doctrine in the face of a defiant and
politicized sexual immorality. Why do pastors now dance round the timeless sins
that infest every congregation and the most critical sins that threaten to
overwhelm our society? The answer is that they are frightened. All too few priests,
professors, parents and catechists give evidence of wanting to touch the
subject of sexual sin,
Christianity will survive the
Devil’s attack on souls via the libido, though in what manner remains a
great mystery.
If the Church Militant has lost its will to witness
to the meaning of sex in our congregations, then how does the faith retain any
practical meaning in our lives? It borders on hypocrisy to protest that
Christianity is being banished from the public square,” when we have not the
stomach to defend against violations of God’s law, whether stemming from our
ecclesiastical or secular institutions. Abandoning this duty leaves us
vulnerable not only to the increasing social chaos we are now seeing,, but also
to those who will step in and regulate it for their own purposes, imposing
criminal penalties and rationalizing their measures by invoking various
alternative, usually politicized theologies.
Perhaps it is also time to can the socially obligatory
mealy-mouthed “No one wants to return to the bad old days when.,” and realize
that open-ended libido puts us on a
trajectory that will only spread chaos, ruin more lives, destroy our freedom,
and weaken our civilization, until we summon the courage to speak the truth. As
Paul VI observed:
…So we know that this dark
disturbing being exists and that he is still at work with his treacherous
cunning; he is the hidden enemy who sows errors and misfortunes in human
history. It is worth recalling the revealing Gospel parable of the good seed
and the cockle, for it synthesizes and explains the lack of logic that seems to
preside over our contradictory experiences: "An enemy has done this."
He is "a murderer from the beginning . . . and the father of
lies,"[Jn 8:44] as Christ defines him. He undermines man's moral
equilibrium with his sophistry. He is the malign, clever seducer who knows how
to make his way into us through the senses, the imagination and the libido,
through utopian logic, or through disordered social contacts in the give and
take of our activities, so that he can bring about in us deviations that are
all the more harmful because they seem to conform to our physical or mental
makeup, or to our profound, instinctive aspirations….
No doubt Pope Paul would agree that the Church
does not have to change with the times.., be sifted like wheat, and that the present occupant of the
Chair of Peter needs to be the “rock” that Christ mandated him to be. OREMUS.
